25% Bonus Drop Rate for Legendaries in Rifts: Now Live

Posted By: April 4, 2014

Good news for players who felt Nephalem Rifts needed to be more rewarding; Blizzard has buffed the drop rates of Legendaries in Rifts by 25%. (Update: This is now live on the realms.) Also note that Horadric Caches (obtained for completing all Bounties in an act) can *not* drop Torment-only gear, no matter what difficulty you obtain them on, which indirectly makes drops from Rifts even more valuable.

Live Hotfixes:

* There is now an additional bonus 25% chance to find a Legendary item while in a Nephalem Rift.

* The number of chests that spawn in the following zones has been reduced:

Core of Arreat

Briarthorn Cemetary

Battlefields of Eternity

Crag of Eternity

…

We are keeping a very close eye on the rate of reward for playing in Story Mode versus Bounties versus Rifts. We wanted to make Rifts more attractive, so that’s the aim of this particular hotfix.

Consequently, some areas were spawning too many chests and creating a relatively trivial method to acquiring loot. We don’t want chests to be in a place where they become unexciting to open when you come across them, but as with other changes we want to address situations that create less than compelling game play.

…

We’ve been keeping a close eye on player feedback regarding Legendary crafting materials (specifically their drop rates) as well as on our own internal data. Right now, we agree that the drop rates do feel a little low and somewhat prohibitive, particularly since crafting adds another layer of RNG to the mix. In an upcoming patch we’re going to be buffing the drop rates for Legendary crafting mats by a fair amount, effectively bringing them in line with the drop rates for Death’s Breath.

Currently very rare Legendary material.

In case some of you may not have seen previous posts where we’ve shared the rates for Death’s Breath, here you go:

Normal – 15%

Hard – 18%

Expert – 21%

Master – 25%

Torment 1 – 31%

Torment 2 – 37%

Torment 3 – 44%

Torment 4 – 53%

Torment 5 – 64%

Torment 6 – 77%

This also brings up another opportunity for clarity: While the drop rates for Legendary crafting mats do scale with difficulty, their scaling is independent of the Legendary drop rate bonus slider in Torment 1-6. /themoreyouknow

Not clear what “bringing them in line with DBs” means there. I guess this means that Purples who could drop a Leg Mat will have the same odds to drop it that an Elite now has to drop a DB? That seems too high, to me. Legendary materials are supposed to be quite rare and require a fair amount of farming time. I think they are too rare now, especially the ones that only drop from monsters that don’t spawn every game and are hard to find when they do, but they should be at least fairly rare, since a lot of the items you can craft from them are very powerful.

I don’t want to do 50 Maghda runs to score up mats to make a single item in Cain’s Destiny, but popping the mat every 4th game on Master difficulty seems too easy. (At that rate we’ll all have stacks of leg mats and the crafting bottlenecks will become Souls and gems?)

Related news I mentioned in the first paragraph, regarding what Horadric Caches can and can not drop. The bug where you could get a goodie bag on normal, open it in Torment 6, and score Imperial gems has been hotfixed, but players keep asking about the item quality possible to get from goodie bags. So now we know; difficulty level no longer makes any difference for Caches. Not the difficulty when you find them, or when you open them. You can not get Torment-only items from them.

Difficulty level has no impact on Horadric Cache loot. We recently hotfixed an issue where gems from Caches were erroneously being impacted by difficulty level, but this was not intended.

There are, however, special Legendaries that only drop from Horadric Caches. The Ring of Royal Grandeur, which reduces the number of items you need to complete a Set bonus by 1 to a minimum of 2, is such an example.

I don’t think that was the question. Can Cashes only drop exclusive Legendaries? Can they drop any Legendary? Can the drop any legendary except those that are Torment exclusive? To clarify: Horadric Caches can drop any type of Legendary (regular or Bounty-exclusive) EXCEPT those that require Torment difficulty on higher. As difficulty has no impact on Horadric Caches, this also includes the ability to drop Torment-only Legendaries. Kadala is similar, as she also cannot generate Torment-only Legendaries.

Only the gear from monsters, including Rift Guardians, is affected by Difficulty level.

I’m not sure this is fair. If you earn a bag on Torment, shouldn’t the bag have contents commensurate with your effort? I guess the argument is that while earning the bag on Torment you are getting Torment-quality drops from monsters, and much higher exp/gold/shards for doing the bounties… Agree or no?

Comments

I think the bounty bag should give loot according to the difficulty in which it was earned. However, I do think that you should be able to open it with a different character in order to smart-loot the results for an alt that opens it. That would be an easy way to get around smart loot being a little TOO smart sometimes.

If you get a horadric cache with a lvl 70 wizard and give it to your lvl 60 crusader to open, the items will roll lvl 70 (because you found the cache with lv 70)but with strength smart drops (because you opened them withthe crusader).

1. I don’t find the entrance to a dungeon or a named monster. 2. I have 1 or 2 monsters left to clear and I have to go look for some burrowed unit like a worm or a scavenger. 3. I have to TP once every 2 minutes, and some f*cker punch me when I have 2 milliseconds left. 4. They give bonuses to acts that I don’t like to play, and forces me into areas that have annoying enemies.

Rifts however feel fluid, varied and challenging. They are long enough so that I don’t get interrupted all the time, and short enough to provide a short break when you need it.

If I could do only rifts, I would. But no can do… Bounties are okey though. But in some of the bounties I wish they could give us the location right away to some entrances like the ones with clear lvl 2 of dungeon X. They are already frustrating to do as it is.

Bounties do have their niche. You can’t beat them for XP and they do provide Horadric Caches exclusive Legendaries to the mix.

Rifts on the other hand are better for drops in my experience. You also have a good chance to get a Forgotten Soul from Rift runs and they are better for Blood Shards as well.

In short, do Bounties for XP and Rifts for drops and Gambling. Crafting is a toss up between the two, because Forgotten Souls come reliably from Rifts, but you do need the unique mats as well and those don’t drop in Rifts at all.

I think this is very intentional, because it creates new options. As a DH I can choose to rely on my mobility to split farm with a friend and get the same rewards as someone who does Bounties on Torment, only faster. The trade-off? *Much* less XP and limited party composition. This is why when my Crusader friend comes online we always switch to Torment farming.

I’m curios what is the Horadric Caches only legs. Can we get a list please :)? it’s cool that they have Bounties-only items.

Bounties is a faster way to get legendaries from my experience so far. You just join a normal difficuly game and every char do bounties in separate acts. I did this 4 times yesterday. Afterwards I created a private game and opend 20 bags in one go. New tristram was covered with loot. I got 5 legendaries, 2 good ones. It was very fun, I can recommend it. I have to do shitlods of Rifts to get 5 legs.

“That seems too high, to me. Legendary materials are supposed to be quite rare and require a fair amount of farming time.”

Well, you still need 2 Forgotten Souls per item (probably much more because of rerolls) and ~10m gold for gems that’s required by some Set items. I think crafting costs will still remain much too prohibitive to be honest, even with this change. Right now crafting is just too expensive to help new players gear their character and don’t provide enough rewards by the time you do get enough materials (by then you’ll find enough Legendaries from enemies).

The devs should be looking primarily at the gem costs in my opinion. What I would do is reduce the gem requirement of items from Flawless Royal to just Royal and eliminate all gem costs from Enchanting.

“I think crafting costs will still remain much too prohibitive to be honest, even with this change. Right now crafting is just too expensive to help new players gear their character and don’t provide enough rewards by the time you do get enough materials (by then you’ll find enough Legendaries from enemies).”

I didn’t realize that some people were suffering from low Legendary rates. Playing old D3, getting my last char up to 60. In less than an hour, 3 leg found in Act 2, 2 from mobs and 1 from a normal chest on Expert.

Granted, I haven’t played the rifts yet but if the drop rate is worse than on Expert then that is a little surprising.

All of the Legendary buffs are starting to worry me, I think some people will be complaining unless they get a Leg with every single enemy killed. If they drop too often then they just aren’t as special. Maybe that is just me though.

Okay , tried out the rifts today , at 2 hours and 37 minutes a legendary dropped “Firewalkers” . I was playing on my DH who really needs the gear , it was a nice slap in the face , they were for a WD lol 😛

I dont expect a legendary every 5 mins but to me it still seems a long time for one to drop .